Take Down Joe Mullin's New Snowden Article

Hmm, I think there may be a misunderstanding here. What I'm referring to there are privacy obligations expressed by Ars to its readers and subscriptors, whether in the form of official privacy policies, implications (e.g. your registration email listed in "Private profile fields" in the profile control panel), or through the historical convention of never having revealed that kind of information in the past (AFAIK).

You can't "reveal" something that's not hidden in the first place, though.

Even if you expand the definition of "reveal" to mean "point out to outside sources," that's still not what Joe/Ars did. Other sources discovered this information all on their own.

As I keep saying, you may think that this sort of article is "below" Ars' normal standards, and that's a perfectly valid opinion, but I just don't see how there's just any reasonable way to conclude that Ars leaked, revealed, or "betrayed" anything.

I *do* agree with you that the wording was ... unfortunate, to put it mildly, in that it definitely seems to tacitly, if not explicitly, confirm that TheTrueHOOHA is Snowden. However, you're a reasonable guy, so surely you can admit that this is pretty thin. Yes, there was "only" speculation about the link between the two prior to Ars' article, but it's not like the article offered any conclusive proof. 99% of the article was just rehashing what everyone else had already said.

Could they have worded it better? Yes. Does the way they did word it somehow push the article from "in poor taste" to "a grievous betrayal of trust"? Not in my opinion, no.

That is why I think categorizing this as some kind of "outing" or betrayal of trust is a huge overreaction.

Hmm, I think there may be a misunderstanding here. What I'm referring to there are privacy obligations expressed by Ars to its readers and subscriptors, whether in the form of official privacy policies, implications (e.g. your registration email listed in "Private profile fields" in the profile control panel), or through the historical convention of never having revealed that kind of information in the past (AFAIK).

You can't "reveal" something that's not hidden in the first place, though.

I'm trying to find out where Snowden revealed that he used that email address to register his account… It seems to have been a secret until it was revealed by Ars Technica. All we had was an email address in a post and no way know whether or not it actually belonged to the account owner, neither did we have any indication whether it was a relatively "primary" email of the account owner. Thanks to the confirmation made, we now know.

It was never hidden. He posted the email on other sites, too. The same username posting the same email address in more than one place... it's pretty obvious. You can't reveal something that someone else has already posted.

Meanwhile, said email was never posted to the article on Ars, in any case.

And, even if it was, it still would not confirm anyone's identity anymore than the already public information had led most observers to believe it was him. Without that public information, there's no links. We can only remain as certain as anyone else who reported on this. Our report, like every other report I've read on the topic, makes it clear that while we think it's him (entirely based off the circumstantial evidence, and not the email address which is meaningless), we can't confirm it.

And for the record, there was a Lounge thread long before we posted our story. But most of our audience doesn't use the forums. Just a tidbit.

The lounge is subscription only, so your statement is disingenuous. "Most if our audience can't post in the lounge" is what I think you meant.

No, he meant most of our audience doesn't use the forums. Because ... most of our audience doesn't use the forums, Lounge or otherwise. And by most we mean like over 90%.

This is the danger in reading too much into comments BTW - a very small % of the readership even reads the comments, and an even smaller % even has an account to participate. There's a real self selection bias at work.

And for the record, there was a Lounge thread long before we posted our story. But most of our audience doesn't use the forums. Just a tidbit.

The lounge is subscription only, so your statement is disingenuous. "Most if our audience can't post in the lounge" is what I think you meant.

No, he meant most of our audience doesn't use the forums. Because ... most of our audience doesn't use the forums, Lounge or otherwise. And by most we mean like over 90%.

This is the danger in reading too much into comments BTW - a very small % of the readership even reads the comments, and an even smaller % even has an account to participate. There's a real self selection bias at work.

While vocal minorities are the bane of reasonable feedback systems, I'd like to tell you what we were told way back when I got my first job at a burger joint. Of the people who have a really bad experience at the restaurant, 90% aren't going to complain about it. They're just not going to come back.

Ken and Aurich, I don't even care about the article. But your response to this has been pretty horrible, Ken in particular. You repeatedly insulted your readers and told us how we were wrong in how we read the article. You claimed that you were standing by the article 100%, then quietly changed it. You told us that using loaded terms for a NSFW picture was perfectly professional behaviour. As an aside on that point, you specifically defended 'letting us know that she was prone to posting these kinds of pictures.' How the hell is that newsworthy? Does it matter?

During the site redesign I made a comment about how traffic statistics show that the daily mail is a far more popular publication than Ars. That was supposed to be a warning, not a recommendation.

Okay, I think we've taken this as far as it's going to go. We've said our pieces, people can agree or disagree with us, but it's no longer a productive use of time to go back and forth over it. The articles are published, they're not going to be taken down. Ken can use his admin rights to post a final thought after mine if he wishes, or this can be the end of the thread, either way I'm going to lock it now.

I appreciate everyone's feedback, wether I personally agreed with it or not. Yes, you're a vocal minority by definition, but you're also the community we care about. I think you should feel like you've been heard.